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This mornings bake

February 22, 2014 - 6:49am

MANNA

This mornings bake

I have changed the feeding of my levain. I now feed it 1: .5: .5 every 24 hours. It has been a week now. The bake this morning produced a house full of nice sour smells. I tasted this loaf and still no tangy bread. This bulk fermented at room temp then went into the fridge overnight for final proofing. Im happy with the results. A nice crunchy crust and soft crumb. I would like to have a more sour flavor to it. Im thinking of increasing the levain in the dough. My levain sits at room temp and this time of the year is around 65 degrees. I think warming it up by 10 degrees would help with the sourness of everything. Below are the bakers percent of what I did. The loaf pictured is 600g and baked at 425 F for 45 min in a cast iron double cooker. The first 15 min covered.

Comments

If you want more sour I suggest lowering the amount of prefermented flour in the recipe so it has more time to develop those flavors. At the same time if you push for a DDT of 77-78 degrees that should help as well. Finally if you add some whole grain to the levain it will help bring some sour notes to the party.

If the starter / levain feedings are done at room temperature and the LAB and yeast have enough food to eat they do with a 24 hour 1:5:5 feeding for the starter) this is the method used to produce a bread with the least amount of sour. At room temperatures yeast and LAB reproduce at roughly the same rate so the resulting bread is mildly sour like a Tartine or Forkish bread.

If you want more sour, you want to promote LAB reproduction while keeping the yeast reproduction to a minimum. That way there arre fewer yeast to raise the dough. and it takes longer, while there are more LABS having a longer time to make things sour. Basically, you want to increase the LAB to Yeast ratio.

If you smell the bread right now you can get a whiff of sour. Take a bite and you get some really nice flavors but no sour. Im ok with that. Im really looking to refine my technique to make bread again for the farmers market that appeals to a wide variety of people. Looking at everything crust, crumb, keeping ability. Every so often I would like to make some really tangy loafs and know how to adjust my levain or process to get that. I have been struggling lately with developing really sour loafs. Im not sure if the cold weather or my process has thrown it off. I have been getting closer to what I want with the new feeding schedule. I was feeding 1:1:1 and made great loafs but lacked a depth of flavor. The new schedule has helped.

bread and that is why SFSD is mildly sour - it appeals to more folks and why Tartine and Forkish use many feeding / refreshments and tossing levain - at room temperatures - all support a mild tang.

For more sour ,I build starter and levain amounts at 92 F.and build them with progressively greater 4 hour feedings without throwing anything away. 92 F is more favorable to LAB than yeast for reproduction rates of 3 to 1. This temperate also means that yeast are reproducing at the same rate as they do at 64 F. So when you finally put the levain in the dough you are inoculating it with slightly less yeast than you would at room temperature (722F) and 3 times as many LAB than you would for a room temperature levain build - making for a resulting more sour bread.

I make my 100 g of stored starter (wholegrain rye sour - no white flour) build the same way It doubles after the 2nd feeding. The 3rd feeding I stiffen it to 66% hydration and when it rises 25% I put it in the fridge for 4 weeks. I will, take 10 - 20 g out of it a week to bake. and never replenish it over that time. Since 36 F also favor LAB to yeast reproduction rates 3 to 1 it becomes more sour as it sits in the fridge. The bread I bake with it in 4 weeks are noticeably more sour the than ones on week on because the starter inoculates the levain builds wot way more LAB than Yest to really pump up the sour.

It works fo me When I want to make panettone, I really have to do many refreshing with lots of discard over several days to get the white levain that has max yeast for rise and few LAB for sour.

I think if you build your levain at 93F you will get a lot more sour where LAB outproduce yeast 13 to 1! Just make sure it has enough food a.d peaks in 12 hours after 3 progressively larger 4 hour feedings where you don't throw anything away and size the final levain build to be exactly what you need for the recipe. You will get your sour then

"cheating" (well, not really) a little bit, refresh your starter with whole barley flour a couple of times. I have once produced a bread that was too sour to eat using a mixture of wheat, barley and rye. At first I just guessed I messed up the fermentation or something, but then I read a post that said a sourdough culture with just barley flour is way too sour.

I think there was some milled barley at my supplier, I will give it a shot. Im just going to pull some off my current starter and give it a try. Something for thought here. My supplier is the Amish. They have a store and can get all kinds of stuff for super cheap. How cheap? I get 50 lbs bags of king arthur flour for 23.00. Spelt flour 5 lbs for 3.00. and all kinds of other stuff thats good ole fashioned unrefined that I want and there accustomed to. I do have to wait a couple of weeks for it to arrive but the cost is well worth it. For those of you that have Amish nearby it maybe worth it to stop in and check it out.

Second try into the fridge for a cold rise. The levain is reduce to 15%. I put the dough into the oven for a really warm bulk ferment. One thing that may affect the outcome is the levain was really young. The last time I let it go for 24 hours before using, this time only about 8-9 hours. The levain in this time had tripled but not started to receed yet. I will let the dough stay in the fridge longer this time though. Wont bake off the loafs intill about noon tomorrow.

So here is the result. About what I expected. The decreased pre-ferment resulted in less sour smells during baking and in the scent of the bread after baking. This was no shocker, since with less pre-ferment the mix got diluted more. More flavor=more of the pre-ferment. The extended cold rise resulted in a more open crumb. Overall still a nice bread. Next bake in two days time I will allow the levain to go for a full 24 hours and increase the amount to 40%. One thing to note I increased the oven temp to 450 so the crumb would not dry out as much.

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